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Royal Bank of Scotland has appointed a global head of equity research a week after Financial News reported investment banks were on a hiring spree for stock analysts, who were among those worst hit by job cuts during the financial crisis.

Nimrod Schwarzmann will take up the newly-created post in London in June and report to Chris Sloan, the recently-appointed global head of cash equities.

Sloan said: “Nimrod will continue to develop RBS’ top quality research product and will ensure that it is a vital component of the cash equities business.”

Schwarzmann joins RBS from Talisman Global Asset Management, a London-based family fund manager, where he was the chief executive officer.

Last week Financial News reported that RBS planned to hire around 15 research analysts this year in addition to the 15 recruited since September.

Among those recently hired are Daniel Cunliffe, a former Bear Stearns analyst, who will join as head of capital goods from hedge fund Marble Bar Asset Management, and Peter Crampton, who will join from UBS as a utilities analyst.

Sloan said: “The core objective here is to pick the sectors our commercial bank is already strong in and build an equity capital markets capability, a research capability around equities and a secondary trading capability, around those sectors.”

Banks have hired aggressively in equities research over the past year with Citigroup, among them, adding 20 analysts to its team in the second half of 2009. However, the US bank lost Richard Taylor, head of its European equity research team, who resigned last week. Taylor is believed to be joining US investment bank Jefferies to take up the same post.

While the figure is an improvement on quarterly volumes throughout 2009, it is still lower than all but one quarter between 2006 and 2008. However, bankers have faith that trading volumes will recover as market sentiment picks up.

In its latest fund manager monthly report, published late last month, Bank of America Merrill Lynch found that the number of investors taking “above normal” risk was at its highest since 2006.